He wasn't going to have Sarah write to her mother that night that he was in any way altered or strange.

There had been times enough for a month when it had seemed to him that he was strange, that he was altered, in every way; but that was a matter for himself; he knew at least whose business it was not; it was not at all events such a circumstance as Sarah's own unaided lights would help her to.

Even if she had come out to flash those lights more than yet appeared she wouldn't make much headway against mere pleasantness.

He counted on being able to be merely pleasant to the end, and if only from incapacity moreover to formulate anything different.

He couldn't even formulate to himself his being changed and queer; it had taken place, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught glimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for Mrs.Pocock?
This was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with the easier throb in it much indebted furthermore to the impression of high and established adequacy as a pretty girl promptly produced in him by Mamie.